Social Media SEO: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn

We all know how important SEO is for online success and are always looking for new, more effective ways to improve your online rankings. Another thing that we are constantly connected to is social media, and most of us can’t imagine our daily dealings without using at least one social media platform.

Well then, let’s talk about the link between social media and SEO and elaborate on whether using social media can boost your SEO campaign and improve SERPs. Let’s start by talking about the now-famous Matt Cutts videos on this topic. In 2010, he said that social signals were a ranking factor, and in a 2014 YouTube video, he stated that social signals like likes, followers, or retweets don’t influence SEO rankings. He explains that these signals don’t influence SEO because they are easily manipulated and change too quickly for the search engines to keep track of them.

Confusing, right? Please keep reading to learn more, as we’ll clarify a lot of issues below.

What Is SEO and How Is It Linked to Social Media?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In plain words, it is a collection of practices and signals that improve the appearance and positioning of websites in organic searches. In more exact words, SEO is the practice that drives organic traffic to a particular website by optimizing every aspect of the site.

One does wonder how using social media can help improve your SEO strategy? Well, if you listen to the words of Matt Cutts, then there is no direct link between social media and SEO. However, experience (and a 2018 Hootsuiteexperiment) have shown that using social promotion does boost SERP ranking and help improve SEO strategy. Of course, all this is data from several years ago, and it is now 2021, so let’s discuss how social media impacts SEO today.

How Social Media Impacts SEO Nowadays?

First thing first, there is such a thing as social media SEO, and it affects how social media activities can boost a website’s organic traffic using search engines. Even if it is not evident right off the bat, and social media does not directly improve SERPs, social media and SEO help and support each other.

Using social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn can help expose your brand and drive more traffic your way. Even though Google (or the other search engines) doesn’t use the social signals as ranking factors, no one can forgo the significance of social media in SEO in 2021.

Differences Between B2B and B2C SEO

Of course, the success also depends on the type of SEO companies and brands use, as there is a significant difference between B2B and B2C SEO.

The B2B or business-to-business practice is the selling of products and services to other businesses. The B2B practice takes a more extensive effort as the B2B products and services cost more money, and there are many factors to consider, like the more complex decision-making process. Of course, this affects the B2B SEO strategy and the approach a brand/company needs to take to have an effective SEO campaign. Some things we can use as successful aspects of a quality B2B SEO strategy are blog posts, testimonials from happy customers, press releases, infographics, and Google/Facebook/Yelp reviews.

B2C stands for business-to-consumer, and it is the practice of selling products and services directly to the consumers. As you can imagine, the B2C SEO strategy requires a slightly different approach, as the majority of products and services cost less and don’t require a complicated decision-making process. As the goal of the B2C SEO is to entice visitors to make immediate purchases on the website, the B@C SEO strategy should reflect this goal. Some aspects of a successful B2C SEO strategy include keywords in the copy, structured data, optimized for mobile use, high site speed, customer reviews, internal links, and excellent navigation.

Even though the definitions above are abbreviated versions, you can note the essential differences between a B2B and B2C SEO strategy. Also, you can note the differences they meet when organizing a successful and effective social media presence and adjusting the SEO campaigns to match and affect the SERPs ranking.

Why Use SEO in Your Social Media Strategy?

Now that we’ve tackled some of the more fundamental aspects of SEO and talked about how social media is not a direct ranking factor let’s talk about the benefits of the excellent use of social media in aiding a successful SEO strategy. Here are the top five benefits of adopting an excellent social media SEO approach:

Get Indexed Faster

Any time a new page gets posted online and gets shared on the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube, Google (and the other search engines) will get a signal that there is a page that needs to be crawled and reindexed. Without sharing the page on social media, it may take Google a good while to reindex that page in some cases up to four weeks) and show it where appropriate.

Get More SEO Ranking Signals

Among the most important ranking factors are time on page and time on site, and social media can benefit these aspects also. You get to drive more traffic to your SEO pages shared on social media and improve the relevant metrics.

Here is how this works: you target your intended audience on social media, providing content relevant to them, and they are more likely to spend more time on your website. As we said above, the time on site and time on page are relevant ranking factors. Thus, by sharing highly targeted posts on social media, you will increase the average time on site/page, effectively telling the ranking algorithm that your page is relevant to users.

Increased Visibility and Building Your Brand

Backlinks are another important ranking factor, and the proper use of social media can also help here. The quality backlinks help the Google ranking algorithm, and they aid in increasing domain authority. Of course, social media is the perfect platform to do this. You can engage your audience with targeted content, and the more they find it engaging, the more they’ll share it, effectively increasing the visibility. The more visible your content, the more likely other people will find it, which helps build your brand and improve your credibility.

One of the significant advantages of social media is the ability for content promotion. It leads to more people discovering your content, linking it to their websites, and helping you with link building. Who knows, maybe you’ll be approached for quote requests. Here we come to the other benefit from increased visibility and building your brand, which helps SEO.

Get An Accurate Reading on Your Audience/Target Customers and Find Great Keywords

Social media helps you learn your actual audience and provides essential knowledge of their needs, likes, desires, and feelings. After you learn this, you can quickly learn of their general tendencies and adjust your SEO strategy to match.

Knowing your audience can help you discern effective keywords relevant to your audience’s searches, which will help you custom-tailor your SEO strategy and increase success. You can also use social media as a testing ground to see what works with your audience and what does not. You get invaluable analytics, and if you look into it, your audience will tell you what they need and want and the keywords they use the most. Of course, you can then use this inside knowledge to fine-tune your content marketing and SEO strategy.

Social Media Profiles Rank in SERPs

Even though no one can confirm or deny that social media affects ranking, there is no doubt that social media profiles influence rankings. As you’ve probably noted by now, social media profiles are often among the top results in the SERPs for brand name searches.

Social media profiles often feel more personal and bring more up-to-date information about a company/brand. People are more likely to go straight to their social media profile instead of their website. Even though this will not directly help SEO, having a social media profile will help your brand in the long run.

Drive Traffic to Your Website

Using social media is an excellent way of promoting your brand, especially if you have a newly minted website. Even if you implement a fantastic SEO strategy on your website, it will take time to become effective and rank in the SERPs. Here is where social media comes in, as social media channels are also used as search engines. If your brand is active on social media with visually pleasing posts, people are more likely to discover and engage with it.

You need to create posts on social media that people will click and visit your site, increasing traffic to your website. The Google ranking algorithm will definitely notice this. Of course, to be truly effective, your content team and social media team should work together in promoting landing pages and select posts via social media.

Start With Great Content 

Before we detail how the different social media platforms can help SEO rank, there is one essential thing to note; otherwise, all this would be pointless. That is to start with great content, as is the content that is the essence of SEO.

The content you provide your audience attracts them to you, so you need to aim for quality content that brings value to them. It does not matter the form your content comes in; it can be a blog article, an eBook, a video, infographics, or a photo gallery. What is vital is that the content brings valuable knowledge and information that your target audience is looking for.

Once your intended audiences come upon your content, they’ll be more likely to read it, spending time on your page. It increases the ranking factors, and Google will rank your page higher.

While many people can discover your content organically, there is no doubt that you can share your content on social media and bring your content to more people. Your social media followers/subscribers will engage with your content, and they’ll be inclined to share it, spreading the word, and create new leads, creating brand exposure and driving traffic to your page.

How To Improve SEO Rank Using Social Media?

As we stated several times above, social media cannot directly help SEO, but it can influence the ranking factors. Here we’ll discuss the various social media platforms and how each can help improve SEO rank. Of course, the essential thing to start with is quality content, and once you have this, you can use the different social media platforms to improve your SEO rank. Each of these deserves a separate article, as there is much more to each, but here we’ll only tackle the basics of using social media SEO.

YouTube SEO

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing platform, it is the second most-visited platform in the world, and as such, it holds enormous sway in all online dealings. Here are some essential tips you can use to improve your YouTube SEO strategy to increase rank:

• Use your target keyword in the first part of the video title
• Optimize your video description per SEO standards, using the most relevant keywords first
• Use the adequate, popular keywords in the tags
• Add custom thumbnails that reflect your brand and video content
• Use cards and end-screens

Facebook SEO

Facebook is still the biggest social media platform and is the one that started it all. With over 2.9 billion active monthly users, that is a lot of people in one place, and it is why you should take advantage and implement a proper Facebook SEO strategy. Here are some of the things you can do to get more exposure on Facebook:

• Select a noticeable, memorable Facebook name
• Use long-tail keywords in your name where possible
• Get a custom URL to match your name
• Fill out your About tab with as much relevant info and SEO keywords
• Regularly update your business information
• Create and share quality content at the correct times
• Use adequate CTAs to inspire your followers to take action

Instagram SEO

Instagram is the most prominent photo-sharing social platform online now, and it has over 1.7 billion active monthly users. Again, this is a lot of potential visitors to your content, and it is why you should take advantage of the numbers. Here are some tips on how you can improve your Instagram SEO for the most significant impact:

• Optimize your profile for search with the correct keywords
• Complete your bio section, adding relevant keywords
• Always add relevant hashtags and location tags; these serve as keywords
• Use descriptive captions to your posts
• Use CTAs and call for tags
• Use the Instagram alt text and write your captions

Twitter SEO

The famous tweeting social media platform Twitter has about 322 million active users in 2021 and is still among the leading content marketing channels. Here are some vital Twitter SEO techniques you can apply to grow your account, get more followers and improve your SEO rank:

• Use proper keywords in your hashtags
• Optimize your Bio description with relevant info and populate it with keywords
• Post content very regularly
• Use relevant CTAs in the bio and add relevant links
• Re-tweet evergreen content

LinkedIn SEO

LinkedIn is the social media network designed for professionals, and as such, it has about 760 million active users a month. Again, there is much room for promoting your brand, and you should take advantage of the possibilities. Here are some tips you can use to improve your LinkedIn SEO strategy and help boost your rank:

• Complete your profile and add adequate keywords
• Use hashtags
• Add backlinks
• Publish posts and articles
• Name your images
• Add an FAQ section

How To Combine SEO and Social Media Strategy for Improved Results

Now that we’ve tackled some of the essential social media SEO tactics, let’s talk a bit about how you can combine the SEO and social media strategies to improve your SERP ranking and gain more exposure for your brand.

Align Your SEO and Social Media Goals

To get the best results, you need to align your SEO and social media goals. It means you should focus your energy in equal amounts on creating excellent SEO content and boost your social media presence by reaching your target audience. By reaching more people, you will drive more traffic to your website, raising the ranking signals.

Share SEO Content via Social Media

A vital thing to note in using social media to your advantage is that you need to share your SEO content via social media. It gains more exposure, reaching more people, and spreading the word about your brand. Of course, the more people see/read/watch your content, the bigger the chances of more people engaging with it and visiting your website.

Optimize Your Content Across All Channels

You need to note that for more impact and better exposure, you need to work on optimizing your content across all channels. Adding an article to your website is not enough in today’s dynamic online world. That article should be optimized for the best SEO results and should bring value to your audience. Also, it would be best if you shared that article across all your social media profiles. Tell people about it on Twitter, share a snippet of it on Facebook and Instagram; this way, you’ll very quickly have the best insight into how your audience feels about your content.

Use the Two-way Data Flow to Your Advantage

As real people govern social media, you are getting actual user behavior data, and you should use this to your advantage. You can build the trustworthiness of your brand, and the more people trust your brand on social media, the more they’ll share your content and positively impact your SEO rank.

Also, the feedback you get from the analytics data is invaluable and gives accurate insight into what people like and what they don’t like. By focusing your efforts on the things people like to watch/read/see, you will elevate your brand and engage with more people across all channels.

What Should Your Next Step Be?

Excellent SEO content is essential for success, but it is not the only deciding factor. While social media does not directly impact the SEO rank, you can’t ignore its effectiveness. Instead, it would be best to focus on creating high-quality, high-value content and using both the fantastic SEO strategy and excellent social media presence and promotion for the optimal outcome.